


Habits of Separation

by nirejseki



Series: Habits [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bodyswap, Fix-It, Len and Mick are assholes, M/M, to each other and others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:42:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9842918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Len and Mick have together mostly gotten the hang of the quirks of their brand new marriage down pat - mostly.But what about the times when they're not together?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Follows 'Habits of Newlyweds' but precedents (and follows) 'Habits of Married Couples'. Will only make sense if you've read those.

He wakes up, and there is no pain.

_He wakes up, and there is nothing but pain._

It’s a shock to the system; he’s almost gotten used to it, itching like burning all over his body, the coolness of the bandages, the drugging mistiness of the IV. 

_It’s a shock to the system; his mind is muted, dull, dark – he doesn’t know where the pain is come from, he only knows that when he moans, there is the whisper of voices, and something is done that makes him sink back into a half-awake daze._

His joints ache, though it’s a dull ache, old, like not stretching too much – not familiar, yet something he remembers – and then he understands.

_He doesn’t understand._

He opens his eyes.

_He opens his eyes._

“Shit,” Mick says, and runs his hands over a body scarred through ill-use but not by fire. “ _Len_.”

He rolls out of bed and goes to the phone, then pauses. 

He doesn’t know what clinic Len put him in, in that furious moment after the ambulance. He remembers the ambulance itself, the beeping machines, the yelling when the wheels screeched to a halt, Len holding the gun – he remembers the hospital bed, fading in and out again as they tended to him – he remembers waking up, fuzzy with drugs, in the hospital bed - Len saying they’re done, saying they’re over, saying they’re no more, but he doesn’t remember more than that. 

He certainly doesn’t remember _where_ Len took him.

Shit.

_His fingers run up his skin and finds only bandages. Was he hurt? He doesn’t remember._

_He wants Mick._

Shit, shit, _shit_. 

He dials Lisa’s number.

“It’s two in the goddamn morning, Lenny,” she groans, answering after fourth ring. “What -”

“Where’s Mick?” he demanded.

“What?”

“What hospital?”

“Why?” she asks, puzzled. “I thought you said –”

“Forget what I said. _Which one_?”

“Fairbanks Center – Indiana – Lenny –”

Mick remembers the name; Len had been looking at brochures, once upon a time when he thought Mick wasn’t paying attention, gnawing his lip in anxiety. Mick had rolled his eyes and taken them away, promising it wasn’t ever going to happen.

Shows what he knows.

“Thanks, Lise,” he says, and hangs up on her. He looks through Len’s phone book – he wouldn’t be Len without his perfect little brown book, names in a careful code and numbers in order, a habit instilled from watching his mother – and finds the number.

_He wants Mick. He doesn’t understand why it hurts so much._

“Hello, you have an adult male, 6’2”, checked in? Pretty severe burns? I need to talk to the doc in charge of his case.”

Mick ends up barking at the poor receptionist, which he normally tries to avoid, but god, she’s so _slow_.

“Hello?” the doctor says.

“Is your patient suffering from additional distress today?” Mick says, wishing he knew what names Len had checked him in under.

“I’m afraid –”

“You need to sedate him today,” Mick says. “He’ll be extra upset. Trust me.”

“I can’t just –”

“ _Please_ , doc. Just check him?”

_A man in white comes in. He thrashes a little, trying to escape. Doctors – he hates doctors. He hates them. Dad will be so upset that he’s ended up in the hospital again…_

_The doctor says something._

_He doesn’t understand it, but the nurses around him leap into action, injecting something into a tube._

_And then –_

_A cool feeling spreads through his body, numbness, and he sinks back asleep._

_It’s not a clean sleep, but it’ll do._

“Thank you,” Mick says, and hangs up.

He sits down on the kitchen counter, putting his head in his hands.

God.

What has he done? Damned himself to pain and misery, and dragged Len along with him.

He _deserves_ that Len leave him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s a lurching feeling, when it happens mid-day.

It’s even more disorienting when it happens _mid-heist_.

“Um,” Len says, and drops the person he was holding up by the collar. There’s a fight going on, and he has _no idea_ which side he’s on.

“Oh, crap,” Mick says, standing in the middle of an ongoing heist with everyone looking at him. Three guys he recognizes as muscle men – Rashid, Tommy G, Dinkins – which was fine, but there’s also Scudder and the freaking Dillon twins, too, Rosa and Roscoe. 

He thought Len stopped working with them.

Guess things change.

“You gonna just stand there or you gonna pop the safe?” Roscoe sneers. “Getting soft, Snart?”

“Bet he is,” Scudder snickers. “Weak link in the chain.”

Rosa laughs.

Mick looks down at the safe.

Thank god Snart taught him how to do this.

“Why’d you shoot out the fire alarm?” one of the mobster guys –Len doesn’t know his name – asks Len. Len tries not to make a face. He thought Mick had stopped working with them.

Guess things change.

“It made everyone scram, didn’t it?” Len points out.

“Well, yeah,” the guy says, sounding doubtful. “But we didn’t get to teach them the lesson we wanted to. Next time, remember that I didn’t hire you to think.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Len replies. “That would require you to have the ability to do it yourself.”

“What did you say?” the guy exclaims.

“I said,” Mick says, “that you’re a bunch of useless bastards that wouldn’t know left from right from up and down.”

“We don’t have to put up with your shit, Snart,” Scudder says, stepping forward threateningly like he thinks that’s going to work.

Mick puts a fist in his gut, which Scudder clearly wasn’t expecting. 

Makes sense. Len’s not the type to jump to physical violence, not like Mick is.

“You screw up my heist again,” Mick says firmly, “and I’ll _know why_ , you get me?”

“You’re the one that froze up on the safe,” Rosa shoots back, kneeling down next to Scudder.

“I got it open,” Mick says. “You’re the dickbags who tried to shoot your way out of the place when it wasn’t even goddamn called for.”

“Because you care so much about avoiding violence in your plans,” Roscoe says, rolling his eyes.

“About as much as you care about your sister sleeping with Scudder,” Mick replies.

“She’s _not_ ,” Roscoe says.

“Uh,” Rosa says.

“He’s _stealing_ from me?” the mobster don roared.

“I’m not saying he is,” Len says peacefully, because no one ever thinks that Mick with his big body and his I’m-so-dumb act could possibly be lying to stir up shit the way Len always does. “I just said what I think I’m owed, given what the take was. Thought I’d bring it up to you.”

“The bastard said the take was fucking fifteen percent less than that!”

_And he called Mick dumb_ , Len thinks but does not say.

He smiles.

“I cannot _believe_ you,” Roscoe yells. “ _Him_?”

“Bro –”

“Maybe you could be having this fight somewhere else,” Mick suggests.

“Yeah,” Scudder says, oily as ever. “Somewhere we can all go and calm down, nice and peaceful, huh? We can meet back up in a day or two –”

“We?” Roscoe says savagely. “You planning on taking my sister back with you to some crappy hotel room, huh? That it?”

“It’s more of a warehouse, really,” Scudder says, because Scudder’s an idiot.

Roscoe punches him. 

Scudder punches back.

Rosa leaps into the fray.

_That’ll show them, calling Len soft_ , Mick thinks but does not say.

He smiles.

Len walks home with his share of the money, glances at the clock. If he goes to sleep now, it’ll probably be over by the time he wakes up.

He’s heading to bed when an idea occurs to him, and he scribbles a note on a Post-It and sticks it to the alarm clock.

Mick gives the muscle guys orders and heads back to the nearest safehouse.

He tears a piece of paper out of a notebook and writes a note; leaves it on the pillow next to the one he puts his head on.

Len wakes up with a piece of paper stuck to his face, right where he’s rolled over onto it.

Mick wakes up with a hand groping the alarm clock and finding paper there instead.

Len sits up, yawning, and squints at the paper.

It says, “PISSED OFF RR&S FOR YOU. GOOD RIDDANCE.”

Mick yanks the alarm clock out of the wall socket it’s plugged into and brings the whole thing to his face, trying to blink the sleep out of his eyes.

It says, “STARTED MOB CIVIL WAR. AVOID THEM IF YOU WANT TO LIVE.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” they say in a unison that spans four hundred miles. “You asshole.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kronos glances at the calendar that Ginny has pulled up for him again. “Are you sure?” he asks doubtfully.

“This is the date, standard Vanishing Point time,” she reports. 

“Hmm. And you’re sure it’s been three months since our mission’s started?”

“Nearly four, Kronos. Are you waiting for something?”

“I guess not,” he says.

Except four months later, he does it again. 

He’s not sure what he’s waiting for.

And then he gets the mission, _the mission_ , and he remembers everything – especially his hatred – and he wonders why it didn’t happen, why three months could go by and nothing happen, again and again and again.

Maybe they’re just not married anymore.

Till death do us part.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turns out it’s because it was only two weeks for Len.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_This is a bit weird_ , Mick thought, floating alongside his body. 

He was distantly aware that he usually didn’t have lucid dreams and he’d almost never dreamed of himself, fast asleep on his bed. It was kind of a boring dream, as they went.

At least he seemed to be sleeping well?

Everything seemed very unimportant, like all of his concerns were gone, floating on the wind. It didn’t really matter, after all, they’d all happen in time, just like they were supposed to.

The only way to describe the feeling was the opposite of forgetting to turn the oven off – he was absolutely certain, though he couldn’t say way, that everything was in its proper place, in its proper time, and it was all being taken care of.

It was kind of nice. Pyromania is a variation on an anxiety disorder, Mick was well aware; he’s never _not_ had that itching anxiety in the back of his head, the one that only ever fades for a little bit when he’s staring into the flame. But now – 

Peace.

It really wasn’t that bad.

He could get used to this.

At most, there was a vague feeling that he ought to eventually go…somewhere.

He wasn’t sure exactly where.

Back into his body, maybe.

He considered following that urge for a minute, but it wasn’t, like, urgent or anything. 

Mick’s body grumbles and yawns, turning over in his sleep, shoving his face into the pillow. 

Damn, he must be waking up.

Mick resigned himself to consciousness.

Then, much to his distantly-felt surprise, his body goes very stiff, as if with shock.  
Huh.

Mick wondered what’s up with that.

“Shit,” his body says, and then Len looks up through Mick’s still-living eyes and says, “Mick, you still here?”

_Oh_.


End file.
